After scratch tickets, it’s their biggest source of revenue. “If our games were not secure and not on the up-and-up, then our business, we would be nothing.”Īnd Keno is a significant chunk of the state lottery's business. “We are based on integrity, security, integrity of our games,” said Massachusetts Lottery spokesman Christian Teja. The more numbers you play, and the more of them you get right, the more you win - up to a million dollars for 12 out of 12, which just happened for the first time in Massachusetts Lottery history in March 2023.
The payouts for each winning scenario are listed on the back of the Keno betting slip.įor example, in a four-spot game where you wagered $1, two correct numbers win you a buck, three right gets you $4, and all four will win you $20. How many numbers you must get correct to win - and how much money each win earns you - depends on how many numbers you played, and how much you wagered. If enough of those numbers are your numbers, you win. In each game, 20 numbers are drawn at random. For example, playing 10 games at $1 per game will cost you $10.įinally, you head to the cashier or automated kiosk, pay up and it’s game time.Ībout 300 games happen every day, every three to four minutes, from 5 a.m to 1 a.m. Next you decide how much you want to bet on each game - from $1 to $30 - and how many total games you want to play, up to 20 on one slip. Then you pick the numbers you want to play, from 1 through 80. This is called a “spot game.” Playing seven numbers? You’re playing a seven-spot game. You begin by deciding how many numbers you want to try, picking between two and 12 numbers. To play, you just need three things, two-thirds of which are provided for you at any location where Keno is available: A Keno slip, a pencil (or pen) and some cash. To answer that, we need to first understand how Keno is played, and how the state lottery runs the game. Lottery doesn’t have software that calculates what numbers to release that would result in a minimum payout overall?” who reached out to GBH's Curiosity Desk with a question: The game has also been a source of curiosity for Dan McCarthy from Burlington, Mass. “And at the end of the night we cash in our tickets and whatever we make goes towards the bill.” “Just for the fun alone, we do it,” she said. “I love to come in and play my numbers.”Īt the nearby restaurant Shanghai Moon 1987, Marilyn Smith said that she and her two daughters have been meeting every Wednesday for the past seven years for dinner, drinks and Keno. “I’ve been playing since I was 19, and that’s a long, long, long time ago,” said Fran Martins at the Daily Mart in Medford. At some bars and corner stores around these parts, it's also a way of life. The 1x multiplier is most likely to be drawn and would leave you without an enhanced payout, but there is a 50 percent chance that another number will be selected.Keno is a lottery game with roots in ancient China, whose name is a nod to Latin. If you've added the Bonus option to your ticket and you win a prize, you payout will be multiplied by this number. With the Keno Bonus, a multiplier is selected at random alongside each draw. However, the most you can win without the Bonus is $100,000, regardless of your wager amount. If you wagered more, multiply the dollar amount you played by the prize figure shown. View the payout tables below to see all the different ways to win and the corresponding prize values. You win if all the numbers you have selected appear in the Keno draw, while you can also win by matching fewer numbers.
There are various different ways to win prizes, depending on which game you are playing. Adding the Bonus doubles the cost of a ticket. There is also an option in Keno to play the Bonus feature, which can increase the value of prizes.
You can enter up to 20 consecutive draws. In Keno, you also get to decide how much to wager per game, from $1 to $20. When picking your numbers, you can choose your own or get a Quick Pick if you would prefer a random selection generated by the computer. This is how many numbers you want to select. First, you must choose your game, from 1 Spot up to 10 Spots.